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Today’s writing (as “required” by my New Year’s resolution) is going to be fairly short. If writing code counted, I’d have already completed today’s installment a few times over, but alas, the slave driver who came up with these rules (i.e. me) is a bit of a tyrant.

Author’s Notes

The revived version of the site has only really been going now for a little over a week, and I’ve already wanted to make author’s notes a few times. For example, in my most recent post on the Multiplicity of Religions, I really felt like adding something related to atheism. But, in a post that dealt primarily with polytheism, I felt that to do so would digress from the topic at hand. If I had my author’s notes up and running the other day, I could have put those words over in the sidebar. I’ve added a somewhat redundant note to this post both so you can see it but also so that I can test the code!

Solo Book Club: January 2015

A World Full of Gods: An Inquiry into Polytheism by John Michael Greer

The second of my resolutions for 2015 was to read one book on the topic of religion, spirituality, theology, etc. per month for a whole year. While not the most intense study that I’ve ever done on a topic, it is a way for me to dig in on topics that I find interesting at least once per month for a whole year. I figure if nothing else, these turn into at least one post per month that acts as a book review of the chosen text. I expect it’s more likely that I’ll be able to write about each book more than once. Each one will be in the sidebar and I’ll do my best to update my progress every time that I write a post here. For now, that involves updating the code in the file, but I’m hoping to figure out a better solution before too long.

This month’s book is John Michael Greer’s A World Full of Gods: An Inquiry into Polytheism. It’s available in paperback from both Amazon and Barnes & Noble but only has a Kindle version; sorry Nook users.

I’ve wanted to read this one for quite some time, but I swear it was out of print for a while before the digital version came out. In fact, it looks like B&N is only selling used copies from individuals and not new copies of the book. Regardless, it’s been recommended to me a few times as sort of a primer for modern Pagan polytheist thinking.

I’ve been a polytheist for quite some time. I mix in a dash of animism, especially where technology is concerned, and at times more than a dash of panentheism. To put it more simply: personal theology, it’s complicated. Sometimes, I worry that I’m using words and concepts that I don’t understand as well as I should. To that end, it seems fitting that I start off my year with an exploration of a theological concept that is extremely dear to me.

The first thing I do want to mention is that, if you can, get the print version. I’m reading it on my Kindle and the digitization of the document isn’t the best. Footnotes that are (I assume) delicately placed at the bottom of pages suddenly end up elsewhere in the digital file. And, for some reason, it suffers from a lack of a consistent left-hand margin which, while common online, is less common elsewhere and seems very strange on the Kindle. That said, I’m only 4% into the book at the time of this post so I’ll be back and later to talk further about A World Full of Gods.